The travelmate 800 (just like any other pc today) comes with windows, and it is installed and completely preconfigured by the manufacturer. So I guess you never tried installing "windows from scratch" on the tm 800.

Imagine you would have to install Windows on a machine like that. It probably doesn't include drivers for any of the "special/newer" hardware, like PCMCIA, centrino, smart card reader, bluetooth, and whatever. You would have to go looking for everything as well. You would have to go to about two hands full of different web sites to look for drivers. And with linux? Most available (open source) drivers come with the kernel. And for some others, an "emerge ati-drivers" (graphics card) or "emerge slmodem" is often enough (btw has anybody tried the latter?)

And imagine windows wouldn't know what kind of power management this machine supports, and you would have to figure out everything yourself. What, the manufacturer put all that information into some driver that is closed source? And the driver doesn't work for windows (now, that is real fantasy )? How would you get power management running without the manufacturer's support, then?

Honestly, if you put in a suse 9.0 cd in the acer tm 800, you could install a complete working environment (and not just an operating system, as with windows) in consevatively 90 minutes. And that includes several window managers, a bunch of web browsers, an office suite and so forth.

"So why don't you use suse," you ask, "even though you think it's so nice and easy?" I guess the reason is that I think it's too much like windows I prefer something like Gentoo.

I really think Gentoo should NOT try to auto configure every little bit of hardware out there. That gap is already filled by other distros. You have the choice I think a lot of this auto configuration comes with a big overhead that makes the distro bloated and slow.

Now, if we're talking about things that don't have to do anything with automatic configuration, like power management for laptops: Yes, I think linux is lacking there. E.g. I haven't gotten standby to work and swsusp is only working partially. But then again, I'm able to change my cpu's clock speed by simply echoing a number to a file, like

Code:

echo 600000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed

Now, do that in windows I don't think it's possible with anything even remotely as simple as that. So it's always a trade-off. Some advantages here, some disadvantages there.

But kernel features like power management don't have anything to do with auto configuration, only with the kernel coders who don't have information about a lot of hardware, and with manufacturers who don't want to give this information to anybody who doesn't sign an NDA.

Oh, and why didn't you respond to my question: Why, if you like the auto configuration abilities of Knoppix so much, aren't you simply using Knoppix? Embrace the choice

I think that the guide should be updated with the information that you have to install the "Event Interface" module in the "Input Device support" section of the 2.6 kernels along with the classic psmouse/synaptics stuff in order to have the touchpad working in X.

I had a really bad time till I figured that out.

And something else.. If its really late, you are so sleepy that you can't keep your eyes open but you cannot go to bed yet because your touchpad is not working even if you are so sure that you did everything right, make sure to check that you have not turned it off by yourself by pressing "Fn + F7" on the laptop...
Out of personnal experience I assure you that it can be really annoying

The travelmate 800 (just like any other pc today) comes with windows, and it is installed and completely preconfigured by the manufacturer. So I guess you never tried installing "windows from scratch" on the tm 800.

I tried to follow the install-guide, but from installing from Knoppix. I think/hope that i've done everything correct, but Gentoo wont start. This is how far i get>

Quote:

* Mounting proc at /proc ok
* No /sys to mount sysfs needed in 2.5+ kernels ok
* Mounting devpts at /dev/pts ... ok
* Starting devfsd...
/sbin/rc> line 188> /sbin/devfsd> No such file or dir !!
* Activating (posible) swap ... ok
* Remounting root filesystem read only (if necessary) ok
* Checking root filesystem...
fsck.ext3> No such file or dir while trying to open /dev/hda3
/dev/hda3>
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
* Filesystem couldn't be fixed

After this message I can logg in as root and try to fix the problem. I cannot write to any files since the filesystem is read only, but i can access the partitions thru Knoppix.

The Wireless-LAN-Chipset is a "Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter" and there is currently no support from Intel whatsoever. There are two hacks for linux by using a NDIS-Wrapper. They use the WinXP driver and put it into a wrapper module you modprobe into your kernel. Currently this wrapper-module from LinuxAnt is not free, so you need a registration key. I would prefer to not put any shareware-closed-source module into my kernel, but i tried it. The module can activate the card, but i can't get it to work with ifconfig correctly.
If you want to try it: http://www.linuxant.com

The second uses the same approach, but is not compatible with Intel-WLAN-cards at the moment:

Status
The driver works quite well on Broadcom cards. Other drivers are also starting to work now. Atheros AR5004 and Centrino (Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100) is now working, but has not been as tested as Broadcom.

After some problems I have my Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 working great with ndiswrapper on my TravelMate 800LCi. The ndiswrapper (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net)version is 0.3, the latest one released, not from CVS.
I am using kernel 2.4.22-ac. Compiling and installing was problem free but after 3-5 minutes I got a total lockup of the system.
Doing a bit of research and after several red herrings I found the solution: the kernel must be compiled as non-SMP

It'd be great if the main post in this thread was updated, or be remade as a mini-HOWTO. Or else it will be polluted with not-very-useful posts like it has been lately. Wasn't some kind guy up to this task?

I first tried to install the Synaptics driver as told in the guide. This failed. After some searching on the net, I found the page to the creators of the driver.

There it said:

Quote:

You need kernel 2.6.0-test6 or later and version 0.11.7 or later of the XFree86 driver. You need to have the "evdev" driver loaded or compiled into the kernel (CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). Set the "Protocol" parameter in the X configuration file to "auto-dev". Also, if you set the "Device" parameter to "/dev/psaux", the same X configuration file should work for a 2.4.x kernel.

When configuring the kernel, enable PS/2 mouse support (CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2) and synaptics touchpad support (CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2_SYNAPTICS).

thanx for all the comments, suggestions, tips and hints. Keep up the good work
For all those questions regarding kernel 2.6.0 I would like to demand a little more time,
as I'm doing a complete rewrite of the howto-compilation based on a split into a 2.4.x
section and a 2.6.0 section.

Due to the release of kernel 2.6.0 as a final (despite the bug-reports) version and my
extensive testing on 2.6.0-test8 for almost 3 month now (or so) I think we need a
wrap-up and a little more structure on this topic. I also want to release this to tldp.org
as pdf or html howto. So please don't blame me for not updating so long.

And something else.. If its really late, you are so sleepy that you can't keep your eyes open but you cannot go to bed yet because your touchpad is not working even if you are so sure that you did everything right, make sure to check that you have not turned it off by yourself by pressing "Fn + F7" on the laptop...
Out of personnal experience I assure you that it can be really annoying

Despite the flamewar (any trolls here?) I had a good laught from this sentence...it's very nice as I had the SAME problem for hours...I even wanted to call the support... very nice...tanks...
For all you flamewar dudes: try MAC-resolution combined with ip-assignment with windows... thant's all I say to this war. If you want to go on with this war, plz take another thread...

I am using kernel 2.4.22-ac. Compiling and installing was problem free but after 3-5 minutes I got a total lockup of the system.
Doing a bit of research and after several red herrings I found the solution: the kernel must be compiled as non-SMP

I have the same problem, after loading the driver, succesfully I think, the sistem get totally locked. But I don't have SMP in my kernel :

hmmm... I won't be able to access my linux box until tomorrow so I can't post my kernel config right now.

What kernel are you running? What version of ndiswrapper? I've only tested 0.3 in 2.4.22-ac. I assume you are trying to use ndiswrapper for an Intel PRO/Wireless 2100, right? One thing I do remember for sure is that I don't have those two APIC support options...

As far as I could tell when I got the lockups, it happened as soon as the wireless if tried to send or receive a packet. Is this what happens to you? Is iwconfig reporting a connection to the AP and showing the right ESSID? Is ifconfig reporting the if is up and good?
Also, I'm not using WEP or WPA at all...

[size=18]
First you need the correct keycodes for your Volume keys:
Raise Volume (Fn + UP) : 176
Lower Volume (Fn + DOWN): 174
After that you'll need to map these keycodes to specific events to get them working. You have to create a file called .Xmodmap ind your home directory and add the following lines to it:

Code:

keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume

After that you'll need to map these events to specific commands. I use fluxbox and therefore I added some actions to my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

I have a travelmate 290 series and I don't get my volume keys working.. I have to use fn+pgup and pgdown, is the same on the 800 series ? How can I find my keycode?
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